Matilda Emily N. Bagshawe was born on 12 June 1973 in England, UK. She attended local all-girls Catholic schools near her family home in Surrey. She was a single mother at 17, but she won a place at Cambridge University and took Persephone, her ten-month-old baby daughter with her. As a journalist, she went on to enjoy a successful career in London, and contributed regularly to The Sunday Times, Daily Mail and Evening Standard, before turning her hand to novels. Her first book, Adored as Tilly Bagshawe, was a smash hit on both sides of the Atlantic in 2005, and she hasn't looked back since. Tilly is married Robin Nydes, a US businessman, and the couple have two sons together, Zac and Theo. The family divide their time between their homes in London and Los Angeles. Tilly is also the sister of the writer and politician Louise Bagshawe.

Sidney Sheldon (1917-2007) was an American writer who won awards in three careers—a Broadway playwright, a Hollywood TV and movie screenwriter, and a best-selling novelist. His TV works spanned a twenty-year period during which he created I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70), Hart to Hart (1979-84), and The Patty Duke Show (1963-66), but it was not until after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game (1982), The Other Side of Midnight (1973) and Rage of Angels (1980) that he became most famous.